Disputed Zimbabwe Poll Backed by Zuma as West Concerned

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said, “They’ve used their power to subvert the will of the people,” Tsvangirai said. “The fraudulent and stolen election has plunged Zimbabwe into a constitutional, political and economic crisis.” Photographer: Alexander Joe/AFP via Getty Images

Aug. 5 (Bloomberg) -- South African President Jacob Zuma
accepted the result of Zimbabwe’s disputed election, dashing
opposition hopes that regional powers may force a rerun of the
ballot, which was criticized by western states. Stocks tumbled
by the most since 2009.

President Robert Mugabe, 89, extended his 33-year rule with
61 percent of the vote and his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front secured a two-thirds parliamentary majority.
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who won 34 percent, called on
the African Union and the 15-nation Southern African Development
Community to back his demand for a rerun.

“It’s a done deal; South Africa and SADC are not going to
change their stance on the elections,” Trevor Maisiri, a
researcher for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group,
said today in an interview in Harare, the capital. “They were
supposed to accompany this process and make sure the political
agreement is respected, so they’ve let Zimbabwe down.”

The July 31 vote ended a power-sharing government between
Mugabe and Tsvangirai after a violent 2008 election produced a
disputed outcome. South Africa has mediated between the two ever
since on behalf of SADC. Tsvangirai said his Movement for
Democratic Change will challenge the results in court and will
supply the AU and SADC with a dossier of alleged fraud committed
before and during the ballot.

People’s Will

“Zuma urges all political parties in Zimbabwe to accept
the outcome of the elections, as election observers reported it
to be an expression of the will of the people,” the South
African president’s office said in an e-mailed statement
yesterday.

The U.S. called the vote “deeply flawed,” while the U.K.
said it had “grave concerns over the conduct of the election.”

The European Union said that while voting was “generally
peaceful and orderly,” it was “concerned about alleged
irregularities and reports of incomplete participation, as well
as the identified weaknesses in the electoral process and a lack
of transparency,” according to an Aug. 3 statement.

Zimbabwe’s benchmark stock index fell 11 percent today, .
That’s the biggest one-day fall since Nov. 2, 2009. Most banks
in the country have stopped issuing new loans because of concern
over future economic policy, two chief executive officers of
lenders said, declining to be identified because they didn’t
want to offend the government.

Zanu-PF illegally bussed voters to polling stations,
supplied them with ballot slips, used traditional leaders to
sway voting and employed Zimbabwe’s security forces to control
the vote, Tsvangirai said Aug. 3. Thousands of voters were
turned away because they weren’t on the electoral roll or were
told to vote far from where they lived, he said.

Vote Doubles

While votes for Tsvangirai slipped from 2008 to 1.17
million, Mugabe almost doubled his total to 2.11 million. Zanu-PF achieved a similar feat in several constituencies it won back
from the MDC.

The AU and SADC sent 69 and 442 observers, respectively.
Speaking before the release of the final results, the head of
the AU observer mission, former Nigerian President Olusegun
Obasanjo, said the vote should stand as “the election is free”
and “fairly credible.”

SADC’s final findings that will be ready within 30 days
probably won’t reverse the group’s decision to endorse the vote,
Tanzanian Foreign Minister Bernard Membe said in an interview.
While the vote was “free and peaceful,” the regional body
hasn’t determined if it was fair, he said.

The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, which had almost 10
times as many observers as the AU and SADC, said the ballot was
“seriously compromised” because as many as 1 million voters in
the MDC’s urban strongholds were left off the electoral roll.

‘Highly Compromised’

The “credibility, legitimacy, free and fair conduct” of
the election and its “reliability as the true expression of the
will of the people of Zimbabwe have been highly compromised,” a
body of non-governmental groups from across the SADC that sent
150 observers to mainly rural areas said Aug. 2.

Zanu-PF won 160 parliamentary seats, compared with 49 for
the MDC and one for an independent candidate, according to the
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission. A further 60 are reserved for
women and allocated by proportional representation.

“We are now going to implement our indigenization and
empowerment policy as a guideline to guide and govern for the
next five years,” Defense Minister Emerson Mnangagwa said Aug.
3.

Mugabe and Zanu-PF have forced mining companies such as
Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd. and Anglo American Platinum Ltd.
to cede majority stakes in their local assets to black
Zimbabweans or the government. The southern African nation has
the world’s second-biggest platinum and chrome reserves, as well
as diamond, gold and coal deposits. Tsvangirai has promised to
repeal the measure.

With the necessary two-thirds majority to amend a
constitution only passed in March, Zanu-PF’s Justice Minister
Patrick Chinamasa on Aug. 2 said the charter “will need
cleaning up.”